This book examines anti-Catholicism’s central importance to the liberal democratic tradition in the United States. Charting the echoes of the Continental Congress’s early characterization of Catholicism as “dangerous in an extreme degree … to the civil rights and liberties of all America” through literary and political texts of the nineteenth century, this book argues that the notions of pluralism and “liberty of conscience” so central to U.S. liberal democracy emerged from a discourse that characterized the United States as “free” by placing it at odds with the Catholic. The book situates a v ... More

This book examines anti-Catholicism’s central importance to the liberal democratic tradition in the United States. Charting the echoes of the Continental Congress’s early characterization of Catholicism as “dangerous in an extreme degree … to the civil rights and liberties of all America” through literary and political texts of the nineteenth century, this book argues that the notions of pluralism and “liberty of conscience” so central to U.S. liberal democracy emerged from a discourse that characterized the United States as “free” by placing it at odds with the Catholic. The book situates a variety of textual productions—from the Federalist Papers to antebellum biographies of Toussaint Louverture, from nativist treatises to Margaret Fuller’s journalism, from popular convent exposés to novels by prominent figures such as Catharine Sedgwick and Mark Twain—within the context of political philosophies of pluralism and democracy. Taken together, these materials demonstrate anti-Catholicism’s pervasive influence on both the liberal tradition and early U.S. culture. More particularly, Religious Liberties argues, they show that anti-Catholicism facilitated an alignment of U.S. nationalism with Protestantism and thereby ensured the mutual dependence, rather than the “separation” we so often take for granted, of church and state.